


Always Room For One More

by spockandawe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, First Meetings, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Gift Exchange, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3189584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time you see your little dancestor, all you can think is that she is just the <em>cutest</em> thing!! She’s so tiny and adorable, and all you want to do is pick her up and give her a great big hug! You don’t, because you know well enough that trolls on Alternia are different from on Beforus, and even if you don’t think Nepeta would kill you a second time, you’re pretty sure whatever she does will hurt. So you’re careful to step out of your hive and approach her all slow and cautious so she can see you coming, like you’re trying to pet a stray purrbeast—Which is extra perfect because you’re you and she’s her, and how could two trolls like you <em>not</em> get along?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Room For One More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AradialSymmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AradialSymmetry/gifts).



                The first time you see your little dancestor, all you can think is that she is just the _cutest_ thing!! She’s so tiny and adorable, and all you want to do is pick her up and give her a great big _hug!_ You don’t, because you know well enough that trolls on Alternia are different from on Beforus, and even if you don’t think Nepeta would kill you a second time, you’re pretty sure whatever she does will hurt. So you’re careful to step out of your hive and approach her all slow and cautious so she can see you coming, like you’re trying to pet a stray purrbeast—Which is extra perfect because you’re you and she’s her, and how could two trolls like you _not_ get along?

                And you do get along! Perfectly! Maybe even… purrfectly??? It is a little tough. You’ve had thousands of sweeps to get used to being dead, and it hasn’t been even a week for her. Honestly, you’re really impressed that she’s come exploring already! How you look in the dreambubbles is basically you memory of who you were before you died, and well. You’ve seen some people die in pretty pawful ways, and it does tend to stick with them for a while. And that’s apart from dealing with being dead in the first place! Nepeta’s doing better than you would have thought, but she’s still not in the best shape when she wanders into your dreambubble.

                You’re really impurressed she made it this far! You did, um, see what happened to her before she died, and it’s not easy to recover from something like that, even here where how you look is all in your pan. She looks like she’s in a hurry, but she’s limping pretty badly and she looks pawsitively _exhausted_ , so is it really so bad to interrupt what she’s doing? You do feel a little guilty for intruding, but once you formally introduce yourself (you always forget that none of the post-scratch trolls have a clue who you are until they reach the afterlife and meet you), she perks right up and actually smiles!

                You invite her on into to your hive, because it’s right here and all, and she can sit down and recover at least a _little_ before going on her way. And you can _actually_ meet her! You have tea and food—and you either have fresh cookies or you can _remember_ the last time you made cookies, really, really hard, and the dreambubble will do the rest of the work for you. She doesn’t really want to stop, but ahhh, you can see that she’s super, super tired, and you finally persuade her that it can’t hurt to take a tiny break.

                She basically collapses onto the seating platform in your front room, and you try really quick to make sure she’s comfortable before heading off to your nutritionblock. First things first, you empty everything that looks good in your thermal hull onto a few big nutrition plateaus! The meat isn’t cooked… but you’ve always liked it best that way, even though your furrends think it’s weird. You bet Nepeta has taste just as good (and under-appreciated) as you do! You’re a little bit embarrassed that you can’t see what she might be saying when you’re in different rooms like this, but you do try to keep up a nice stream of friendly babble! And hee, at least in different rooms, you’re probably less loud than you’ve heard you tend to be.

                As soon as they’re set, you ferry those nutrition plateaus right on over to Nepeta. You catch her saying ‘thank you’ at least once, but you’re just buzzing with too much energy to stop and wait to see if she wanted to tell you anything else yet. You still have to make tea! While the water’s heating, you rummage around in your cabinets for something really, _really_ nice—Maybe that tea blend Kurloz made for you himself? Maybe? Or there was that one Porrim liked— And you make sure to keep up with the silly chatter so Nepeta doesn’t think you’re trying to ignore her!

                You aren’t the _fastest_ at getting the tea together (partially because you also have to shove all your scattered food back into your cabinets), but it doesn’t take you all that long. But still, by the time you walk back into the other room carrying Nepeta her tea, she’s already polished off every single piece of food you put in front of her, and she’s curled up, fast asleep on the seating platform. Aww, she is just so purrecious you can’t even handle it! You are soooo so so so curious about what she’s been doing now that she’s dead, and about where she was going and whether she had any plans and whether she wants to stay around and get to know each other—You’ve been watching her from a distance for so long that you’re _pretty sure_ you’re about to come on way too strong because you’re so excited to finally meet her. But! You do have a little self-control (sometimes). You can wait.

                So instead of waking her up, you set her tea down on a nearby table, and even set out a bowl of sugar next to it for whenever she gets up on her own, and tiptoe off to find something to keep her warm. You end up coming back with an armful of furs from when your mom used to take you hunting when you were still a pupa. They are just the _softest_ , nicest things, and you tuck her in all warm and cozy. And for good measure, you make sure the curtains behind the seating platform are tight shut, so the light won’t bother her. Nepeta must have been even more exhausted than you thought, beclaws she doesn’t move even a single time between when you set the first fur on her and when you head off to find a way to entertain yourself until she’s done sleeping.

                It’s… hmm. It’s a while before she wakes up! You forgot to keep an eye on what time it was, but you definitely get a good day’s worth of sleep yourself before she makes a single move. And aw, she wants to be moving on her way already? That’s. You guess that’s fine, if she really needs to. You were just so excited to get a chance to finally talk to her. And you have to remember that she doesn’t have any idea who you even are! You can’t forget that. You do get to feed her one last meal and talk to her, though! And that give you the chance to explain about yourself and your furrends, and how you were the first set of game players. But it’s only a short meal, and then she gets ready to head on her way.

                She does apologize for leaving so soon, and that it’s a shame she can’t stay and get to know such a purrfectly charming troll (that’s you!), but that she has to be on her way. You can’t help asking what it is she’s doing that’s so urgent, and she looks you dead in the eyes and says, “I’m going to find Equius.”

                That’s. It’s just so perfectly pale and sweet, after only a _week_ of her being dead, and still not quite recovered from how she died. And especially after how it ended for the two of them— _Well_. It almost brings a tear to your eye, it really does.

                But in a way, now you’re even more worried about how she’s going to do out there. She was limping badly enough when you met her, but it’s worse now that she’s had the chance to stiffen up after a nice long day of sleep. It doesn’t take _long_ to recover here, it really doesn’t, and effectively you have all the time in the world, so does it really matter whether she goes looking now or in a few nights—After the _look_ she gives you when you say that, um, you really understand on a much more personal level why Alternian trolls especially need moirails.

                You backpedal as fast as you can to clarify that no no no, you didn’t mean there was no _point_ in looking now, just that if she takes a little time to get better first, she’ll have a much easier time looking for Equius. And perhaps you can give her some… help? Advice? You know at least a few things about the dreambubbles, even if you don’t have any idea where her moirail is. She still wants to go _now_ , never mind advice, but what finally gets to her is when you cautiously ask whether her moirail might be happier if she wasn’t hurting herself trying to find him.

                You do mean that. Honestly! You’re extrapolating a little, because your only pale relationship—Well, it wasn’t what you thought it might be, and that’s that. But when you think about everything you’ve seen of these two, you do honestly think Equius would prefer it if she wasn’t suffering on his behalf. You do feel a little (a lot) guilty when you see the stricken look on her face as she sinks back down onto your seating platform. But it isn’t a big delay! Just a few nights! And, and you can tell her about things, and give her food, and she’ll have a comfortable place to sleep, you aren’t just trying to make her stick around just to satisfy _your_ curiosity.

                Even after she agrees that it’s probably more sensible to stay with you for a few nights, she’s still so subdued and quiet, and you feel awful that it’s kind of sort of your fault. You want to get to know her, yes, but you also want her to start smiling again. So it’s basically the purrfect step forward when you ask her to tell you about her moirail.

                You have to laugh when she leads off with telling you that he’s a, “Stupid, sweaty, casteist _idiot,_ ” in the most affectionate tone pawsible. It’s pretty adorable! And she definitely doesn’t leave you thinking that she doesn’t like him or anything. It feels like he has plenty of faults she’s more than happy to tell you about, but efurry time she tells you one bad thing, there’s a big conversational detour so she can tell you _ten_ good things! You’ve been watching them for sweeps and sweeps of course, but now you feel a bit silly, because you thought you knew them so well and it turns out you were barely scratching the surface. Nepeta is talking away, grinning from ear to ear and waving her arms, and speaking so fast that you can’t do much more than sit there and smile and watch her talk.

                It takes a long time for her to run out of things to say! And honestly, you’re pretty sure that she could go on talking for a lot longer if she wanted. But instead she asks you how your session went! Well, there’s a lot to explain there. And to be purrfectly honest, it’s not… It isn’t nearly as happy as watching her talk about Equius. In fact at this point, after watching so many timelines go by with the new troll players, um. You’re maybe a bit ashamed of how badly you and your furrends worked together.

                So you just go quickly through the basics, and you tell her more about the scratch, and how on your planet, _she_ would have been your ancestor. And even though you’re skipping lots, Nepeta still looks plenty interested, and she asks you lots of question. _And_. She asks you about _cat puns_.

                Basically, it’s the best direction the conversation could pawsibly have gone. You could talk about cat puns _furever._ And she’s the same! You can even tell that you’re being too loud, which means it must be bad, but she doesn’t act the tiniest bit annoyed or anything! She’s laughing so hard that it’s hard to read her lips, but you don’t mind, you are having just the _best_ time with her! You tell each other about your moms (you’re both pawsitive your families would have been _purrfect_ as a pack together). And eventually the two of you are laughing almost too hard to talk, beclaws the conversation has become almost more puns than regular words, Nepeta stops dead, the smile drops from her face, and as solemn as anything she says, “This conversation has become... a _cat-astrophe!_ ”

                This is it, your double-death, Meulin Leijon is officially dead, suffocated from too much laughing. You can’t _breathe_ , ahahaha, how did you ever get by without knowing someone like Nepeta? She’s leaning in with a wicked little grin, and oh nooooo there’s still so many cat puns out there and you’re already dying— You tip over onto your back with your eyes tight shut and helplessly wave your arms. “Stop, stop, I surrender!”

                When you dare to look at her again, she’s leaning back against the far arm of the seating platform, just grinning and watching you. She lets you change the conversation after that. Which is good! You were having fun— _Lots_ of fun, you can’t remember the last time you got to have such a great time talking to someone, but you’re afraid that if you keep laughing like that you’re just going to end up with a splitting headache, and that would be a waste of your time together!

                Instead you ask her more about her friends. You thought you knew most of what there was to know about them! But after hearing her talk about Equius, you’re so curious to hear about what it’s like to _know_ all of them instead of just watching them from the dreambubbles. Of course, you get distracted as soon as Nepeta starts talking about Sollux and Feferi being matesprits. Beclaws all you can think of is Mituna and Meenah, and it’s so interesting, since you would have always guessed they might go pitch together!

                That gets Nepeta’s attention. She doesn’t know who any of your furrends are, but she just wants to know more about not-really-Sollux and not-at-all-Feferi. And ahhhhh, it’s so _fun_ to explain! Nobody here except Kurloz ever wants to talk about this stuff with you, but you think Nepeta is just as enthusiastic as you are. You break down Meenah and Mituna for her, and she answers all your questions about Sollux and Feferi, and ooooh, it’s really interesting to see the ways they’re so alike and different. Once she explains it, you can definitely see how Feferi and Sollux wouldn’t work pitch together! But you think she agrees with you that Mituna and Meenah were _totally_ flirting pitch fur ages and ages before the scratch happened.

                Of course, once you’re talking about Mituna, it’s so hard not to talk about Latula! And then Nepeta just has to tell you about Terezi. But then she stops and sighs, because she’s purretty sure that Karkat was interested in Terezi flush. Maybe some pitch, but definitely lots of flush. She says they’d be pawfully cute together, but it still kind of sucks, because she—Aw. That’s hard, especially when you’re so young. Not that you’re old! Or maybe you are, but dreambubble time just isn’t the same as it is before you die.

                To distract her, you just have to tell her all about your version of Karkat! But you are very, _very_ clear that Kankri isn’t nearly as nice as Karkat sounds. Karkat sounds angry, but Nepeta’s very definite that he’s sweet underneath the shouting. You have to tell her than Kankri’s the opposite, all quiet to hide the way he’s just plain _mean_. You can’t help hissing a little when you tell her that he won’t leave you alone because your fascination with purrbeasts is apparently ‘problematic’—Never mind that they make _you_ happy and it doesn’t hurt anyone! No, instead he says that you liking purrbeasts is going to trigger trolls who don’t identify with their birth species, which is just silly, but he keeps doing it even after Horuss plain told him that wasn’t a problem.

                Nepeta is definitely curious about Horuss! And you don’t blame her, not at all. But, um, you still stumble really awkwardly when the conversation turns that direction. Beclaws you aren’t going to _lie_ to her and tell her that you and Horuss weren’t moirails. Or, uh, that you sort of still _are_ moirails, you’re just pretty sure the relationship is dead, you just haven’t gotten yourself ready to go actually break up with him yet. And wow, it is really, _really_ embarrassing to admit that the whole reason you’re dating is because the two of you wanted to see if you could have what Nepeta and Equius have.

                Of course you can’t. It’s easy to see that from _this_ side of things. But both of you went into that moirallegiance really hoping that kind of perfect pale romance might magically materialize. And of course it didn’t, and now you’re putting off the actual breakup because you know he’ll take it hard and ugghhhh every path furward out of this is just going to be so awful and unpleasant. Nepeta’s so sweet, because she just lets you explain the whole mess without interrupting, just nodding along until you trail off into silence on your own. You think you’re probably blushing, because wow, the way you acted and the things you did. Looking back, it really doesn’t hold up at _all_.

                It helps a lot that Nepeta isn’t mean about any of it. She doesn’t ignore the whole thing! She just listens and takes it all in. And when she starts asking questions, none of it sounds like ‘what were you _thinking’_ even though that honestly wouldn’t be very out of line. You weren’t ever… _interested_ in Horuss, so it really wasn’t nice of you to let him think that you were, just because you wanted a moirallegiance like Nepeta’s. And even now, you’re framing a lot of it in terms of ‘this has been hard for _me,_ ’ when Horuss is purrobably going to be hurt much worse than you.

                And ouch, even though Nepeta’s a sweetheart, even the nicest questions really draw attention to some of your behavior. Like Horuss acting happy! You think it still makes sense, that acting happy helps you _be_ happy—But, um. When you have to explain why you told him to smile all the time, it doesn’t make so much sense out loud. And without her ever _correcting_ you, you think it’s purretty clear where she thinks you went wrong. Honestly, you really thought you had a better understanding of moirallegiance than this. By the end, you are blushing like a wiggler, and you feel a _lot_ younger than Nepeta, even though she’s only seven sweeps old, with zero sweeps of afterlife experience.

                Still though, even after airing that mess (where a lot of the blame falls squarely on you), Nepeta still seems to be enjoying your company. She asks lots of questions about Horuss as a person, without having to make any of it about you-and-Horuss, and after you satisfy her curiosity, she laughs and says she thinks she’d like to meet him—After she finds Equius, of course, but she thinks she and Horuss (and Equius and Horuss) will get along just fine.

                Conversation like that makes the night pass so, so quickly! The two of you miss one meal altogether without even noticing, and you only realize that you haven’t eaten when you notice the sky getting lighter through the window behind the seating platform. You both tumble into the nutrition block, and laugh together as you try to make something edible out of the food left in your cabinets. By the time you go to sleep, you know that you’ve been talking together all night, for hours and hours, but it feels like you’ve only just started to get to know her.

                And the next two nights pass just the same way, except you’re getting more and more anxious at the idea that Nepeta’s going to be leaving soon, and who knows how long it will take her to find Equius out here? So how long is it going to be before you even have a _chance_ of seeing her again? You’ve tried to explain to her about how the dreambubbles work, but a lot of it is just practice, plain and simple. Exploring without that practice makes it a _lot_ more likely that she’ll end up wandering away through doomed timelines, and without knowing _where_ you’re going, it makes it really, really hard to find your way back. Not impawsible! But you might not see her again for dozens of sweeps, and you have no idea whether she’ll even manage to find Equius.

                Hm. It is… possible that her aspect being heart might help. But rogue—That’s not really _right_ for something like this. You don’t even know how she’d use it. And you don’t think most of the players from her session ever learned how to use their aspects at all! It probably helps to be trapped in a dead game session for sweeps with nothing else to do. But rogue is no good, there’s no good way to turn this around so she’s _stealing_ anything. But _mage_ on the other hand—

                You do your packing without telling her. Because you want it to be a surprise offer! If she tells you she doesn’t want help, that’s that, you just have to deal with it. But if she _does_ want you to come along, this means you’ll be able to join right in without holding her up at all. By the time you have your sylladex packed for a few perigees away from your hive, you can tell that she’s ready to leave. She’s fidgety and spends a lot of her time staring out the windows, and you can barely tell that she limps at all anymore.

                To be honest, you’re almost expecting to have to justify why you’d be useful to have along. But you don’t even get all the way through making the offer before she _pounces_ on you and says she’d love to have you along! And that’s before you even explain that you’ve used the dreambubbles enough that you won’t get lost, or that you _think_ you can mmmmaybe even be able to navigate both of you on a direct path to Equius through the bubbles, instead of just wandering and hoping you find him. You’ve seen plenty of Nepeta being happy the last few nights, but it turns out that was nothing at all compared to how she looks now.

                It feels like such a big step when the two of you are finally outside and you're locking the hive door behind you. You’ve been exploring before, of course. You’ve been on long trips, with your friends and by yourself, back when this all was new and exciting. But it feels like you’ve just been stagnating in your hive for sweeps and sweeps and sweeps, and it’s so different to step out now, without knowing _where_ you’re going, and with Nepeta bouncing on her toes beside you. You shut your eyes and take a deep breath, searching for the feeling of _Equius_ inside her, all the little pieces of him she knows and remembers, and then you let your mind spread out and out through the bubbles. It takes a few minutes—which means this definitely isn’t going to be a short trip—but there it is. You look up and east, to where a small little bubble is drifting slowly towards the edge of yours.

                Nepeta is watching you expectantly. You smile, and ask, “Ready?” She only grins and laughs. And the two of you set out towards the next dreambubble together.


End file.
